Looking Back
by AugustinianFrog
Summary: The Second Battle of Hoover Dam is over and the Courier is looking back on his footsteps that brought him here. He finds that there is only one appropriate way to respond to the whole ordeal. Rant. Spoiler Warning.


The Second Battle of Hoover Dam was over.

The brown colored uniforms of the NCR troops were still streaming over to the East side of the dam. Caesar's troops were still routing. All those years of waiting, of the armies sharpening their knives, all the pretense, cloak and dagger operations, all those years of maneuvering and counter maneuvering and it was all over in a matter of minutes. Maimed bodies of the Legion were still floating downstream of the Colorado river while their fallen comrades littered a long and gory trail all the way up to the Legate's camp where it ended with the equally broken body of Legate Lanius.

And, deciding he deserved a much needed rest, the Courier sat down on the edge of the dam facing Lake Mead. He was watching the calming surface of the lake as the skies seemed to clear and become dark blue, heralding the coming of dusk. Beside him, Veronica also plopped down in her usual happy go lucky nature while the eyebot ED-E, simply called "Eddie" by the Courier, floated lazily in one spot.

"I don't get it." The Courier suddenly announced, his brows dipping in thought.

"Get what?" Veronica asked curiously, shocked that he suddenly broke his usual silence. Generally speaking, it was more customary to hear the explosion of his gauss rifle than to hear him voice his thoughts.

"The…whole thing!" The Courier cried, confused hands going up in the air in an act of exasperation.

"Oh-kay…care to elaborate?" Veronica inquired, unsure whether to be concerned or to – gently – knock some sense into him.

"Well, lets start with that idiot Caesar over there across the river. Thank God I put a bullet in his skull before all of this went down…" The Courier decided.

He then launched into a very long rant.

"The man was obviously educated. He retrained several fledging tribes and under his guidance and knowledge of military tactics, united the 86 tribes. However, he didn't stop there, he re-trained them to mirror the Empire of Rome. He even taught them Latin, for crying out loud." The Courier grumbled.

"So what do you not get?" Veronica asked.

"Why Rome? Why fashioned after the Imperial Empire under the emperors when it was during that period, after the Pax Romana of Augustus, that the Empire spiraled into a steady decline. Surely he would have known that. Now, I guess power corrupts and ambition blinds but that's just stupidity not meriting someone of his knowledge." The courier shrugged.

"Maybe he didn't care? Perhaps he thought he could do better? I don't know, do I look like a guy to you?" Veronica quipped.

"Well…you're on our team." The Courier snickered.

"Wait…what?" Veronica sputtered.

"Regardless, that's not the end of it. The Legion of 86 tribes and he trains them into a force that simply bulldozes all in its path. _Lets produce a bunch of Latin speaking muscle heads_ _but lets not give them firearms even though history shows that firearms completely changed the course of history!"_ the Courier mocked.

"Certainly made them easy to bring-"

"Oh, but I'm not done yet! _Lets militarize 86 tribes and base them off the Roman Empire but lets only focus on the military! Lets ignore all the other good stuff from history like arts, sciences and philosophy and focus on Imperialism, you know, the same crap mindset that got our world nuked in the first place!" _

At this point, Veronica decided she just sit back and enjoy the show.

"Geez, you'd think one of those idiot Centurions going around saying 'Ave, true to Caesar' would soon figure out that saying really originates from 'Ave Caesar! Moritori te salutant!' You know, 'Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!' the very words of the gladiators who threw their lives away for the amusement of the idiot Emperors and crowds."

"I really don't think they would have been smart enough to know that. If they were dumb enough to keep following him, you honestly think they would be smart enough to know-"

"And honestly, how did a bunch of idiots with dull machetes keep the NCR stagnated this long? Are the NCR that bad at producing marksmen? I don't care how thick your armor is, if it isn't power armor a chemical ballistic round is going to punch through steel." The Courier growled.

ED-E was, rather absurdly, still floating stoically.

"Actually, from what I've seen, yes, the NCR _is_ that bad at producing marksmen." Veronica replied.

"That's beside the point. Look, I've been all up and down this Mojave desert and honestly, other than Vegas, which isn't much anyway, it's not like the place teeming with resources. It's a nuclear wasteland for crying out loud, just like every other place! And we got these two idiot governments fighting over this piece of crap land? I don't care if you're bragging that you got the biggest septic tank on the block, it still means nothing more than that you have the biggest container of crap!" The Courier raged.

Veronica shrugged in surrender.

"And don't get me started with Colonel Cassandra Moore. You'd think the woman's answer to everything was genocide. _'Here be Khans, go kill them. There be Mr. House, pull the plug on him. Yonder there is Brotherhood of Steel, go blow them up!_"

"Oh don't worry, they're doing a good job doing that to themselves an

"Thanks for not killing them, by the way." Veronica thanked quietly.

"Oh don't worry, they're doing a good job doing that to themselves anyway. But I don't get that, after all that fuss your Elder gave about not accepting people into the charter, all I had to do was ask, go plug a bug and BAM, I'm in!"

"I give up..." Veronica muttered under her breath.

"And those Boomers! If it wasn't for the fact that I believe random and indiscriminate killing is, you know, slightly wrong, I would have totally zeroed _their_ artillery pieces with the Euclid's range finder and melted those suckers. _Where's your artillery now, suckers! That's right, I got the bigger gun!" _

"I think we now can see the brain damaged caused by that bullet to the head." Veronica whispered to ED-E

"_Beep._"

"Heck, I would have used that satellite laser to flash vaporize Legate Lanius except I wanted to see the look on his face through the scope of my Gauss rifle before I pulverized it. I don't care how thick your armor is, I just shot at a round going at near the speed of light. When it hits your armor its going to cause a miniature explosion that's going to _spin your brain in a blender!_ By the way, what idiot Rangers go in attacking some guy with a giant piece of garbage for a sword with just a combat knife? Ha, wish I could have known what Lanius' last thought was. _I have a friggin huge sword! Yeah? I have a friggin huge gun._ I don't care how big your stick is, you don't bring a sword to a gunfight. You won't win. Every time."

"Hey now, I'm using a power fist and I've saved you butt plenty of times." Veronica defended.

"You're wearing power armor." The Courier grumbled.

"…Still!" Veronica retorted.

"And honestly, I need to be skilled in order to make steak! Any kind of steak. I know darn well enough how to covert an electron charge pack into a microfusion cell but apparently it takes a different kind of rocket science to hold a piece of meat over the fire and keep it there until it's medium rare to well done." The Courier grumbled.

"…What?" Veronica demanded.

"Or even better, caravan lunches. It takes _mad skillz_ to…listen carefully…put cram, instamash, and pork n'bean into…wait for it…a LUNCH BOX!"

"Does that zapper of yours have a 'stun' setting?" Veronica muttered to ED-E.

"_Whirr."_

"You know what I also don't get?" the Courier asked.

Veronica sighed painfully.

"…What?" Veronica groaned.

"How did those Boomers get that bomber off the ground? Last time I was at Nellis, I distinctly recall seeing the runway pockmarked something awful. That bomber would have completely torn off its landing gear…or just outright crashed before even getting into the air."

"I don't know." Veronica muttered, surrendered to everything now.

"Anything else I didn't get…hmmm…ah yes, why'd he shoot me?" the Courier demanded.

"Hm?" Veronica inquired.

"Benny could have just knocked me senseless and, you know, not shoot me in the head. It wasn't as if I knew what I was carrying. Besides, I was just a messenger." The Courier shrugged.

"I don't know…" Veronica mumbled, wanting the monologue to be over with.

"Heck, I honestly don't know how I survived either. It's not like Victor had a shovel on him. Geez, how thick is my skull or how lousy was his aiming that Victor, with those stubby little claws, managed to yank me out of the ground in time just for Doc to get me patched up…" the Courier muttered thoughtfully.

"Well, why did you go after him?" Veronica asked.

"Hm?"

"Its not like you were compelled to go chase after Benny. You could have just gone back and said your package got stolen." Veronica offered.

"That was the idea at first but then I, in my travels, I found out more about the Legion." The Courier explained.

"Wait…what does that have to with it?" Veronica asked, eyebrows raised while her countenance was set almost into a look of disbelieving pity.

"I learned more about the Legion…and how many historical errors and idiocies Caesar was making. At that point I _had_ to do something about it." The Courier replied matter of factly.

"…You went all this way…because you got a vendetta against the Legion…because Caesar made a bunch of historical errors and was a bad student of the course of history?" Veronica asked skeptically, as if trying to spell it out.

"Well, yeah! I was a history teacher before I was a Courier."


End file.
